Holy cow. I was -totally- wrong about my suspicions re: Ivanova…and Talia!!
Love these little glimpses into day-to-day life in the station, like when Delenn and Sheridan both get their copies of Universe Today. 
Especially enjoyed this scene knowing of the developing chemistry between these two.
And Lyta’s back! Glad I saw the pilot episode where Lyta gets to see Kosh. She’s a much stronger character now. As soon as she said that someone on the command level had a hidden personality / mole, I suspected Ivanova. AHA! That’s why she’s always been so adamantly against being scanned. At least that’s what I thought at that point in the episode.
The whole “butt” conversation between Sheridan and Delenn was pretty funny. And then (woohoo!) Delenn puts her hand on Sheridan’s…and he doesn’t seem to mind! I was so sure that he’d kiss her…
And then that friendly scene between Susan and Talia. Suddenly I was thinking, hey, maybe Ivanova should forget about Garibaldi and go for someone like Talia!
But then…THEN!! It turns out that Ivanova is a latent telepath!! Holy cow, that explains why she was so paranoid about Psi-Corps, and also puts a whole new twist on her relationship with her mother.
And then Sheridan remembers the weird dream he had, but doesn’t get a chance to tell Ivanova about it. I still think there’s more to Ivanova than meets the eye, though even she isn’t really aware of it yet. Don’t tell me.
And TALIA WINTERS is the (unwitting) mole! I was totally floored — didn’t expect THAT at all. So much for me finding Talia a tad too wimpy, eh? You all must have been biting your tongues. She makes a good Evil Talia; I’m looking forward to seeing her in future episodes.
Lyta seems strangely drawn to the Vorlons, and even comes back for one more glimpse of the real Kosh. Interesting that Kosh complies. Frustrating that the camera is focused on Lyta rather than Kosh when he takes off his encounter suit!
Nearing the end of Season Two…
Next episode: The Long, Twilight Struggle.
[For those who comment below: As the title of my blog indicates, I'm watching B5 for the very first time so PLEASE refrain from posting plot/character spoilers/hints about upcoming episodes, or including links to pages with spoilers (unless you warn readers that they contain spoilers). More info about spoilers here. Thanks so much! - Debbie]
12 comments ↓
Oh, hell yeah.
Technically, we still are.
Looks like the shortened version is making it to LJ, now (instead of the full thing)
Oh, and I’ll just say that you’ve got a lot to look forward to.
Kosh coming out of his encounter suit sounds a bit like my furnace coming on, were the ka-womph is from bit of extra gas before ignition.
Debbie, so you didn’t go for the original fan experience and wait 19 weeks to get from last episode to this episode.
More examples of foreshadowing from JMS:
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One other thought on Talia…one of the motifes we’ve played with from the start was always showing Talia in mirrors…in Race, in Z’ha’dum and others…always showing the reflection, her opposite, just to set stuff up on an emotional/symbological level.
About “The Quality of Mercy”
Yes, part of the reason for the episode was to set up the notion of an implanted personality as acheivable tech.
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and on the timing of Pat’s return
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Pat is nothing less than terrific. If there was any sense of hesitation in her appearance in “Divided Loyalties,” it can be attributed to the fact that she had just given birth to her son something like 4-6 weeks prior, if that much, and this was pretty much her first day back in the saddle.
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You said “And then that friendly scene between Susan and Talia. Suddenly I was thinking, hey, maybe Ivanova should forget about Garibaldi and go for someone like Talia!”
In fandom back when this was first shown there was quite a bit of speculation about “Did they or didn’t they?” JMS talks about that in the “JMS Speaks” section of the Lurker’s Guide, but you can read that when you’ve finished watching the whole show.
Well, now that the cat’s out of the bag, it’s probably safe to tell you that if Laurel Takashima - who was originally supposed to have shot Garibaldi at the end of Season 1 - had stayed, she would have been the mole.
Unfortunately, Talia doesn’t return in subsequent episodes, although she’s referred to once or twice. Talia’s turnaround was not just a blow to Ivanova, though, but of course to Garibaldi, who had a bit of a crush on her and was actually intending to bring her into the conspiracy. A close call, all things considered.
The Talia reveal was spoiled a bit for me because I was also reading the Babylon 5 comic at that time: just around the time of the episode broadcast a (considered canon) storyline was running telling about how Garibaldi and Sinclair first met on Mars and how they (although they didn’t know it at the time) encountered a Shadow vessel.
They also found a secret Psi Corps installation - probably the same one we saw in “A Spider In The Web” - and the very last panel showed Talia, unconscious, being… well, they were doing something to her. So by the time I managed to watch Divided Loyalties I pretty much guessed the twist.
The intent by JMS, I believe, was to have the comic book story published after the episode broadcast, but due to scheduling problems, that didn’t happen. Luckily, not that many people read both the comic book and watched the show… except for geeks like me, and of course I had to wait quite a while before watching because I was in Singapore at the time.
There was this conversation in Hunter, Prey:
Kosh:”I sought understanding. I listened to the song. Your thoughts became the song.”
Sheridan: “Has this ever happened before?”
Kosh: “Once.”
In light of their conversation in Divided Loyalities, I think it’s Lyta Kosh is talking about.
Actually, when I saw this for the first time, I was pretty sure that the mole was _not_ Ivanova, because the episode seemed to be pushing suspicion in that direction just a bit too hard (e.g. the scene of Talia waking up to find the other side of the bed empty, followed by the attack on Lyta).
Setting aside the contractual issues around Talia’s actresss, my only reaction to that whole episode was “JMS, you bastard”
Sadly this was Andrea Thompson’s departure from the show. (I don’t really think that’s a spoiler as it was known at the time). I think JMS had been developing the relationship between Talia and Ivanova for a long time (I have a friend who called it way back in the first season when Talia tried to invite Ivanova out for a drink). It’s a pity it wasn’t able to be developed further as it would have been pretty advanced for a show at that time (what was there was pretty unusual as it was).
This was a really fun episode over here (on the then UK B5 newsgroup) because for once we had just enough spoiler to make life interesting. We knew there was a traitor and that they would be revealed on this episode - but we didn’t know *who*, and much entertaining speculation was had by all.
I think consensus was split between “it must be Ivanova” and “Ivanova would be too obvious”. I don’t think anyone expected it to be Talia because of the unresolved TK powers storyline. Ah well.
You know ,when I first saw this episode I immediately thought, “The mole is Talia.”. And then I pulled back on that idea as too obvious. And then I got to the end and there it was.